


The Silence

by Kirak



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Brokeback mountain-esque, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, Lyla is a great best friend, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Redemption Ending, Sibling Incest, Slow Build, Twenty Years Later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:47:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirak/pseuds/Kirak
Summary: Sean and Daniel meet up once a year for a weekend camping at the Mount Rainier National Park. They each have their own lives and this is the only time they see each other, but it means more to them than either one of them is able to admit.What will it take for them to be honest with each other?'Every year, Daniel arrives first. He parks, trembling a little. He steps out of the car before he can consider driving away; before the bittersweet, twisted feeling building in his chest can overcome him. He retrieves his backpack from the trunk and waits at the side of the road.'
Relationships: Daniel Diaz (Life is Strange)/Original Female Character(s), Daniel Diaz/Chris Eriksen, Daniel Diaz/Sean Diaz, Lyla Park/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 33





	1. Part 1: Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from this beautiful song by the Manchester Orchestra.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ui9umU0C2g
> 
> 'But you, amplified in the silence  
> Justified in the way you make me bruise  
> Magnified in the science  
> Anatomically proved that you don't need me'

Every year, Daniel arrives first. He parks, trembling a little. He steps out of the car before he can consider driving away; before the bittersweet, twisted feeling building in his chest can overcome him. He retrieves his backpack from the trunk and waits at the side of the road.

They always park here, in the space where the Bear gas station used to be, a cut away in the trees, though each time, they are slowly and steadily reclaiming it. Daniel likes to see the forest creeping forwards like this. He takes a photograph of the spot on his phone so he can compare its progress to the years past, pinned on his notice board.

After half an hour, Sean pulls up in Lyla's battered Buick. He stays in the car a full minute before the door opens. Daniel busies himself with his phone and definitely doesn’t count the seconds as Sean walks towards him.

'Hey,' Daniel says, smiling nervously.

Sean doesn’t smile.

'Let’s go, Daniel.' He sounds tired, resigned. Daniel hears _Let’s get this over with,_ but that at least is better than _Let’s not do this anymore,_ so Daniel takes what he can get. He nods. Sean barely looks at him; his gaze is trained on the trail ahead. Daniel heaves the backpack onto his back and they make their way along the familiar route, Daniel leading the way.

Their spot is much as they left it. A few more initials have been carved into the rock. Daniel half expected to find the rock formation shattered or fallen or blackened with ash, but no. It is their constant, a welcome reminder that some things do not change.

As Daniel begins to set up the tent he has brought with him, Sean stares. Daniel stops.

'Wanna help?' he asks.

Sean says nothing.

'We can sleep out here if you prefer. I just thought, since, y’know, last time-'

Sean says nothing. He makes a fire and for a moment, gazing at the twigs beginning to catch, Daniel can almost pretend it is as it used to be.

But the silences speak more words than either of them seem to have these days. Daniel cannot remember how the silence compares to the last time they were here, or the time before that, but it feels stronger, distilled with time. Harder to break through. 

Daniel hammers the tent pegs into the ground. Sean smokes. Feeling foolish, Daniel passes around ham and cheese sandwiches. Sean eats half of one and smokes another cigarette, idly flicking the ash on the floor of the cave. Daniel draws in his notebook until the sun begins to set, dyeing the sky and the river blood red.

Something surrenders with the sun. Sean sighs as though he knows it. He pulls out a bottle of bourbon and shakes his head when Daniel pulls two plastic beakers out of his backpack. Daniel shrugs and pours himself a double, taking small sips. Sean takes a large gulp from the bottle, then another. Night descends on them like a welcome blanket. _It’s safe,_ it whispers to them. _You’re home._

The words come slowly, like blood to the surface of a bruise after impact. 

'I thought you weren’t coming,' Daniel says.

Sean pauses, 'Me neither.'

'I’m glad you did.'

Sean takes a long swig of bourbon and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Half the bottle is empty.

'I could never say no to you, Daniel. Let’s not pretend otherwise.'

Mid-sip, Daniel splutters and coughs. He takes a long drink from his bottle of water.

The stars appear, a few at a time, in the black-blue above. Sean finishes the bourbon. 

'One bottle a night,' he says, stretching, 'unless you've got any supplies?' 

Daniel rummages around the bottom of his backpack and retrieves finds a few cans of slightly flat lager. 

'Nightcap?' he asks Sean. 

'Beer tends to make me gassy and I'll probably need a piss in the middle of the night, but yeah, sure, why not.'

They down their beers in silence, only broken by the crickets chirping and the rustle of something small in the undergrowth.

'I think I'm gonna call it a night,' Daniel says quietly. He picks up his backpack and moves towards the tent door. Sean is still and silent. Daniel looks back at him as he unzips the door. 

'Aren't you coming to bed? Uh, to sleeping bag actually, but it's the best I could do.'

'You want me to-' 

Sean stares at Daniel, who frowns in confusion.

'Yeah, I'll just leave you out here on your own. Of course, Sean. I mean, you can stay out here if you want to, but-'

Sean looks at him squarely, 'No, it's fine. I'll sleep in the tent.' 

Daniel blinks, his cheeks burning in the darkness, 'Good.' 

'Finally taking those bear warnings seriously?' Sean grins testily as Daniel unzips the inner space of the tent and begins to unpack two sleeping bags. 

From inside the tent, Daniel mutters something about privacy.

When Sean zips up the tent after him, Daniel is snuggled deep into his sleeping bag, facing the wall of the tent, seemingly already asleep. Sean sits on top of his sleeping bag, cleaning his glass eye. He sits like that for a long time and it is many hours before sleep finally carries him away from his thoughts, like a piece of driftwood down the Nisqually river, with no knowledge of where it is heading nor where it has been or why it has been travelling such a long, long way.


	2. Part 2: Rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sean and Daniel find a lot of old memories stirred up.
> 
> 'The weight of guilt seems to lift temporarily from him. Its absence is addictive. He clings to Sean’s shirt like a drowning man, getting drunk on clean snatches of air that he steals from between his brother’s lips, again and again.'

When Daniel awakes the next morning, Sean is nowhere to be seen. His cell phone has precisely no bars of signal and he feels the familiar tingling in his fingers, the storm gathering momentum in his chest. Daniel forces his breathing to steady, forces himself to remember who he is, where he is, what he has practised.

5: his cell phone; the inside lining of the green polyester tent; Sean's backpack; Sean's sleeping bag; Sean's makeshift pillow of worn clothes. 

4: his hands on his knees; the soft sleeping bag; the ground beneath that; the warmth of the sun through the tent. 

3: the wind blowing lightly; birds singing; the river. 

2: his sweat; Sean's deodorant.

1: last night's toothpaste. 

The lonely tent is stifling, so Daniel starts cooking breakfast on the little camping stove he has brought. The eggs, bacon and beans are almost done by the time Sean jogs through the clearing, his t-shirt soaked in sweat. He slows by the stove where Daniel is perched and takes of his shirt, using it to wipe his forehead. 

'I didn't realise you'd started running again,' Daniel says. He focuses on stirring the beans and turning the eggs with the spatula. 

'It helps.' Sean plonks himself next to Daniel and grins rather too widely. 'What's all this, Daniel? Has Sophie been training you?'

Daniel scoops beans, a fried egg and three rashers of bacon onto a plastic plate and offers Sean a spoon-knife-fork contraption. 

'What the-' 

Daniel shrugs, 'A Splayd, apparently.' 

Sean shakes his head, but chews appreciatively, 'She's trained you well.' 

Daniel manages a bit of egg and a rasher of bacon. Sean finishes the leftovers and Daniel washes the plates, cutlery and utensils in the river.

He hears a splash a little way away from him. Sean's shorts, socks and sneakers lie discarded on the bank. 

Daniel freshens up with some wipes back at the tent, sprays on deodorant and brushes his teeth. 

'What's the plan for today?' Daniel asks the open tent, but no answer comes. He swallows and looks down the river. 'We could follow one of the trails. I brought some fishing gear too, we could try and catch a bite for dinner.'

'Sure, why not.' Daniel isn't sure if what he hears in Sean's voice is sarcasm. It's difficult to tell through the walls of the tent. "Not much else to do round here, is there." Sean's voice is flat, empty. He steps out of the tent in clean clothes with tousled hair, grimacing down the river. "Unless you fancy hunting bears."

With hindsight, Daniel thinks, hunting a bear might be less painful than the current experience. He finds Sophie's words echoing in his head from yesterday morning, when she had come down to breakfast.

She had ruffled his hair, unruly at the best of times without anyone's assistance and laughed at his expression and the shadows under his eyes. 

'It's one weekend with your brother,' she laughed. 'I know he's a convict, but-'

'Soph, it's not like that. We've talked about this, please-'

'-And you blame yourself, which is, frankly, unhealthy and therapy takes time, I know, but seriously, you look like you're the one being sent to the chair or something.'

_God, if she only knew-_

Soph had tucked her ash-blonde hair behind her ears and pecked him on the ear and said, seriously, that he shouldn't be going if it affected him like this. That Sean would understand.

That any normal brother would.

Sophie was normal - happily, refreshingly normal - bubbly and thoughtful and almost too sweet unless someone turned on Daniel and then, her claws came out. She could be ruthlessly smart, had just made junior executive at the network and was pretty, too, in a petite, curvy kind of way. There were more than a few jokes of him punching above his weight, which Daniel ignored. He knew they looked good together. Sophie fit nicely in Daniel's arms, warm and soft. He could lean down and kiss the top of her head and almost, almost forget. He was talking, smiling, laughing more.

Daniel had told her parts of it, tiny jigsaw fragments spread apart so they couldn't be fit together, more than he had told anyone since Chris. She stayed and she held him through the worst of it and she didn't tell him he was crazy. It was thanks to her that he had finally decided to seek help.

But she didn't know Sean.

*

The brothers walk in silence. Daniel checks his phone for signal - nothing - and resigns himself to gazing lazily at the scenery. 

Looking north, the river cascades rapidly down the mountain, the wide riverbed full of rocks, huge boulders dumped in the middle as though a giant hand has discarded them one by one. Large trees lie like fallen soldiers, uprooted and half-buried by debris. The water snakes along, milky white with sediment and leaves a dirty gray film on everything it touches.

Daniel sits on the bank, his feet dangling over the wide, dry riverbed, filled with clumps of crumbling earth and rocks carried downstream. Dropping his backpack beside him, he retrieves his sketchbook and a pencil and begins to draw. 

Sean climbs down into the riverbed wasteland and walks over to the cloudy water. 

'Do you remember the river by the cabin?' Sean asks quietly, looking at the tiny stream meandering through the debris, trying to find a way home.

'In... Oregon?' Daniel couldn't forget, but his sense of geography from the time is nine years old. The place names jumble together and often get stuck on the tip of his tongue, especially if Claire and Stephen or Chris, back in the day, ever asked him about The Journey.

For a long time, he had tried very hard to forget about it. 

'Yeah, Willamette National Park,' Sean picks up a smooth pebble and studies it quietly. 'We went on the bus with Mushroom.'

'Yes, I remember it,' Daniel sighs defeatedly. He attempts a curving line but can't get the stream right, it keeps meandering out of proportion.

'The white-gray stuff made me think of the snow, that's all.' 

'We've seen snow a bunch of times, Sean. Why should I remember that time in particular?' Daniel snaps impatiently. He crumples the drawing, rolling his eyes towards the snow-capped mountains and the blue, blue sky.

Sean puts the pebble down, looks down at the pawprints tracking over the stones and the path, but says nothing.

Daniel rubs the back of his neck and puts his sketchbook away. He glances over at Sean. 

'Look, I'm sorry. I just think it's easier if we don't talk about it, that's all.'

'Why not talk about it? It's something in common, shared experience.'

'You know why.'

'It wasn't all bad, Daniel. Far from it.' Sean sighs, 'I wouldn't give up that time I spent with you for the world.'

Before that day, Daniel thinks, when he adored Sean, but Sean was a closed bedroom door and a few scathing words and laughter that he could never quite reach. Maybe it would have been better for both of them if it had stayed that way.

'I still have nightmares about that damn cougar. When I snap its neck, it keeps advancing, circling us, with Mushroom clamped in its mouth. I keep snapping it and snapping and its head just spins from one side to the other.' Daniel hops down into the river bed, kicking the rocks as he moves toward Sean. 'It's so stupid. After everything I did, that cougar sticks with me.'

'It was the first time-' Sean starts.

'Yeah. I guess that was when I stopped feeling like a kid,' Daniel looks down the river. 'You shouldn't have had to look after me like that. My therapist thinks-' He stops. 

'Please, just tell me.'

'It's an unhealthy attachment, Sean! That's all he knows. That you say you want to be a part of my life but you don't. You don't return my calls. You don't visit. Even after last year-'

'Oh, so we're talking about that now?'

'You're the one who didn't return my calls.'

'You went back to your life,' Sean says quietly. 

'What should I have done, Sean? Followed you back to Lyla's couch? Told the network to screw my contract? Waited for days or weeks for you to get back from driving the truck to wherever?'

'Daniel, you've got this beautiful, perfect life. I don't fit. I'd ruin it. And most of the time, that's fine and I've accepted that. I've had fifteen years behind bars to come to terms with what happened. But it still hurts.'

Daniel bristles, 'Why won't you admit it? You regret it, you wish you'd just left me to the cops back in Seattle-'

'You were just a little kid. You were everything.' Sean pauses, rubbing his head, 'Shit Daniel, the truth is, sometimes I wish we'd crossed the border and not gave a damn who we hurt in the process. Just you and me. We'd have made it to Portos Lobos. But I wouldn't have liked what it'd do to you. I couldn't do it.'

'You're a good person, Sean Diaz.'

'I'm not though, Daniel. I thought things might be different. '

Daniel looks at him and whispers, 'I'm happy.'

'I know you are.'

'I haven't been in a long time.'

Daniel gazes at Sean, his dark eyes full of longing and remorse and Sean looks at him, really looks, and Daniel knows he sees all the lies he tells himself. He always has.

When Sean finally kisses him, Daniel feels lighter than air, lighter than he has felt in months. Sean is slow, hesitant, gentle. The kiss is so soft that it aches. The kiss is an apology for the things they don't speak of. The kiss is a prayer Daniel’s been waiting for it for so long he feels tears threatening to spill from the corners of his eyes.

The weight of guilt seems to lift temporarily from him. Its absence is addictive. He clings to Sean’s shirt like a drowning man, getting drunk on clean snatches of air that he steals from between his brother’s lips, again and again.

It is more than he deserves.

He longs to bite Sean’s lips and taste blood, raw and red, to demand he take back every goddamn apology. He wants to stun Sean into finally letting go of that part of himself which is always out of Daniel’s reach: the scrape of teeth and nails over skin and blood like the truth rushing to the surface, blossoming red, marking him guilty.He needs there to be some sort of struggle to be rushed and regretted and resented because this _hurts_.

He is not some fragile, young, innocent thing.

He is a monster.

As they pull apart, Daniel is too aware of his own breathing, of the simple fact of the rocks above them and the ground below them, still, not trembling.He focuses. He works his hands under Sean’s shirt, feeling the muscles tense, twitching, cataloguing the shape of his scars and the dimensions of his bones.

Sean gasps, a soft, sweet, lovely sound that goes straight to Daniel’s groin. He pulls Sean’s shirt over his head, taking particular care over his glass eye, and coaxes him down to the ground. Daniel pulls his own shirt over his head. He is dizzy, he is drunk on Sean’s kisses as he sits astride him and leans in, again and again. He wants Sean to know that he is loved, beyond question, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

The ground is dry and cracked and trembles beneath Daniel’s knees. Sean lays a hand on Daniel's shoulder, watching him with a sad half-smile as he struggles for a second. The ground stops shaking.

Daniel dips down to kiss Sean’s belly button. He fumbles with Sean’s belt, the zipper of his jeans, pushing them down to his ankles. His fingers dance across his brother’s hipbones, his stomach and down. Daniel slides his thumb over the slit of his cock, pressing a sticky trail against his skin.

“Daniel,” Sean whispers between kisses, brilliant and dreadful, “Daniel, please.”

Daniel waits. _Please, get off me. Please, leave. Please, never see me again._ But the words don't come. 

Daniel’s jeans are distressingly tight; with one hand he undoes them and frees himself with a shuddered breath. He stares up at Sean through his eyelashes, pressing a chaste kiss to the head of Sean’s cock and after a few seconds, finally takes him into his mouth.

Sean tastes wonderful. He is salt and ash, bourbon and sweet, sweet regret. He is guilt and lost time and everything Daniel shouldn't want. He is everything that he has dreamt of for as long as he can remember. Daniel wraps his hand around himself as he sucks and licks. He takes Sean all the way into the back of his throat, pulling back as he gags. Sean strokes Daniel's hair as he wraps his hand around the base of Sean's cock, the way he likes when Sophie does with him, wet with his saliva, and tries to coordinate his mouth and tongue and hand. Sean moans and bucks gently into his mouth. His fingers clench in Daniel's hair as his body quivers and he comes with a shattered gasp.

Daniel spills brokenly over his stomach, cursing softly under his breath. Sean gazes up at him, eyes half-closed. Daniel can feel his heartbeat through Sean's legs either side of his thighs.

Guiltily, Daniel grabs the wet wipes from the rucksack and offers one to Sean. He cleans himself quickly, looking away from his brother as he peels off his spoiled shirt and stuffs it into the backpack.

Sean’s face is carefully blank.

Daniel mutters something expletive under his breath and stalks off down the river. Sean scrambles to his feet, wincing; finally noticing the pain in his back and shoulders. 


	3. Part 3: Wastelands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel needs some time alone. A little more is revealed about Sean's background
> 
> 'As Sean presses the denim to his cheek, he feels a piece of paper folded in the pocket. He unfolds it. It is one of Daniel’s sketchbook pages, only a little crumpled from being slept on. It is Sean, building the fire. Sean, smoking a cigarette, staring into the sky. Sean, close up, sullen and silent as Daniel puts up the tent in the background.
> 
> Scrawled next to it, I wish I knew what to say to you.
> 
> Underneath, Why do we keep coming back?
> 
> Crossed out in a corner, I’m sorry.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been listening to this playlist as I write this week.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro9kFNO3hnc

By the time Sean catches up to him, Daniel is a small brown dot on a small piece of rock in the middle of the blue and Sean knows better than to attempt to swim after him. Instead, he follows the river back to their camp. Under the surface, he sees a run of salmon zigzag their path through the current, following a call he cannot hear. They are perfectly synchronised. Each knows where they are going.

Back at the camp, Sean sits on the ground and builds a fire. He isn’t sure why he finds this action soothing. He doesn’t bother to light it; it’s hot and they have no fish to fry. Maybe it will wait until later. Thinking of the salmon, he opens the tent and sits next to some possessions flung from Daniel’s rucksack. Two rods, a container full of bait. Daniel has thought of everything.

What does that mean?

Why does it have to mean anything?

Sean’s lies back on Daniel’s sleeping bag, on his jeans from yesterday rolled up as a pillow and inhales deeply, closing his eyes. He considers pushing the jeans into the bottom of his bag, feigning innocence, _Maybe a raccoon stole them?_

He almost smiles at the thought.

As Sean presses the denim to his cheek, he feels a piece of paper folded in the pocket. He unfolds it. It is one of Daniel’s sketchbook pages, only a little crumpled from being slept on. It is Sean, building the fire. Sean, smoking a cigarette, staring into the sky. Sean, close up, lightly scowling, sullen and silent as Daniel puts up the tent in the background, twelve months tired of carrying this hurt in his heart from Daniel leaving, without a word about what had happened.

Scrawled next to it, _I wish I knew what to say to you._

Underneath, _Why do we keep coming back?_

Crossed out in a corner, _~~I’m sorry.~~_

Sean sighs and retrieves the next bottle of bourbon from his bag along with his phone and headphones. Music on, he lies back and tries not to remember.

He thinks of the road, of driving for miles without another vehicle in sight, just him and the horizon stretching on. He’s used to being alone, prefers it nowadays. He supposes he’s forgotten how to talk to people. He never refuses a hitchhiker by the side of the road, down on their luck, but feels a secret, almost shameful, relief when they reach their stop. He can never get too comfortable, as though they can see what has happened etched on his skin. He doesn’t know how to act natural around them, how to be himself.

 _Go find yourself then, Sean Diaz,_ Lyla’s voice rings in his head; his conscience, his anchor.

Lyla, of course, is an exception. Sean doesn’t like to think what would have happened without her, even if she did keep trying to talk him into doing art therapy with her wife, Ash.

Like Daniel, she didn’t seem to comprehend a world where Sean Diaz didn’t draw, as though his teenage self was haunting them, a ghost or a memory or what might have been.

Fortunately, Ash was sensible enough to decline. He’d closed the door almost silently on his way in, on his way back from wondering listlessly around their old neighbourhood, sitting at the diner drinking black coffee or wandering in the woods where they partied and smoked pot and drank beers.

He was the ghost, and they all knew it.

‘Sean needs fucking help, Ash! I can’t believe you’d be so heartless, this is what you _do_.’

‘He doesn’t want to engage with it, Ly, and I don’t blame him. Art therapy’s not for him, not at the moment anyway.’

‘You don’t know even _know_ him,’ Lyla sobbed. Sean’s heart aches but all he can do is lie down on her sofa and pull a cushion over his face.

‘No Ly, I don’t, but I do know a lot of people who’ve been hurt. And I know the worst thing you can do is force him. It has to come from him.’

‘I can’t stand seeing him like this.’

‘I know you can’t. I really think Bill might be able to help. He's great with PTSD and childhood trauma sufferers. I’ll recommend him and if Sean agrees, I’ll get him an appointment.’

‘You think that’s best?’ Lyla whispered.

‘I do. It wouldn’t be right anyway,’ Ash said. ‘I don’t see family, Ly.’

It turns out, Lyla ‘the love witch’ has great taste in women. Sean loves Ash almost as much as Lyla does; fiercely and without end. Ash is tall and willowy with hair the colour of fire and a temper as calm as a summer breeze. She gets a spark in her green eyes when her stubborn streak shows signs of breaking free.

 _This,_ he thought when he first saw them together, then again when he moved into their house, _is what love is._

It turns out, he was wrong.

Love is letting your wife’s best friend stay on your couch when he gets out of prison and after six months, instead of kicking him to the curb, offering him the spare room. When he found the driving job at the logistics company, Ly and Ash didn’t demand he back paid the rent. Instead, they threw him a party, with cake and balloons and a lump in his throat that didn’t disappear, no matter how or how many times he tries to say _thank you_.

They didn’t _fix_ him. They didn’t need to.

Sean loves them so, so much for it.

Before he left for Mount Rainier, Lyla asked if he was sure. If he wanted her to go with him. Ash too, if that was what he wanted.

It’s not that she didn’t like Daniel-

‘I loved Daniel, Sean,’ Lyla sighed. Past tense, Sean noticed. ‘He was such a cool kid.’ Past tense, again. Sean felt waves of shame for letting his emotions run so close to the surface last year and pushed them down. ‘I don't know what happened last year, but- I never want to see you like that again, Sean Diaz. I’m not letting you go until you promise me that’s not going to happen.’

He promised she wouldn’t see him like that again.

Sean would just have to hide it better.

Ly and Ash had both hugged him ferociously as he left.

‘Thought you’d appreciate the privacy,’ Sean smiled. ‘Get your love nest back to yourselves for a while.’ 

‘Come home soon!’ Ash grinned. Lyla held her hand, looking worried beneath her smile as they waved him off.

As Sean gulps back the bourbon, he hears a scuffling noise outside the tent. He pulls his earphones out of his ears and scrambles to a sitting position, screwing the top back on the bottle. Almost two thirds of it is gone. He blinks, cursing himself. He doesn’t drink, _never,_ not like this.

‘Daniel-‘ he tries, sticking his head out of the tent. And freezes.

Not fifteen feet away from the tent, is a large, black bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there will eventually be lots of lovely Diazcest!


	4. Part 4: Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel is alone with his memories, until he realises Sean is in danger.
> 
> ‘He sees red smeared on his clothes, wide gashes in his arm, a bite gouged out of his neck that leaves his gasping as an artery bubbles a sad fountain of blood. He hears every word he will never, ever get to tell Sean, steal out hopelessly between his breaths because it is too late, he is too late.’

Daniel sits, surrounded by water on all sides. He can’t remember exactly how he got here - moving the rock, parting the river - it doesn’t matter. His clothes are dry.

He has failed again.

* 

‘I don’t use my powers any more,’ Daniel had once said to Chris; the next day he had stopped a bus load of school children falling into the river when a bridge collapsed.

Chris looked on at him with wonder, as his arms reached out as though of their own accord. Afterwards, they sat on the roadside, watching the sirens. Perspiration and tears soaked Daniel’s face. He figured he had cursed himself.

‘I don’t get to win,’ he had muttered, over and over, clutching fistfuls of his hair, ‘I don’t get to win,’ until Chris had kissed him silent.

The way Chris looked at him had always made Daniel a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t until, years after they had drifted apart as best-friends-turned-lovers do, that Daniel realised upon seeing an old photograph. Their dad had taken a candid shot of his sons in the yard one sunny Saturday.

Sean lounges on the porch, forever fifteen, laughing with Lyla. Daniel kicks a ball surreptitiously around the yard, desperately trying to follow the thread of their conversation. Lyla smiles sweetly, encourages him, passes the ball. Sean ignores him. Despite Lyla’s kindness, Daniel’s eyes are fixated on Sean. His expression-

It was the way Chris had looked at him. It made him feel sad and guilty and in the end, the reason he had given for them going their separate ways before college was quite different to the reason his heart ached.

_Chris, I want you to find someone who looks at you like you’re their whole world,_ he didn’t say.

_Chris, I’m in love with my brother,_ he didn’t say.

And definitely worse, since that day at the border, or even before then, when he tortures his mind to remember the way he wants it to, _Chris, I keep imagining that he might feel the same._

‘I still want to be friends,’ Daniel had whispered, the old consolation prize, but Daniel knows too well what a person looks like the moment before they shatter. They hadn’t spoken since. 

Daniel missed Chris terribly; more like a brother than a boyfriend, he thought, ironically. There was no one else who knew him on The Journey, no one who knew anything about what had happened that couldn’t be found in a few old newspaper reports. The occasional hushed whispers or furtive glances directed his way when things were particularly slow were the only sign it wasn’t all an immensely fucked up dream.

Daniel pushed himself into his art. It helped. His occasional visits to the state penitentiary to see Sean became slashed, violent lines and splashes of red and orange. Everyone in college thought of him as being quiet and either profoundly deep or disturbed. He didn’t care.

Since Sean passed him a folded, torn piece of paper over the table and he saw a sketch for Superwolf’s front cover, Daniel had hardly stopped to breathe. 

‘Finish our story,’ Sean had muttered, not looking at him. ‘Please, _enano_. I don’t want to draw any more.’

Many times and many places, Superwolf was hunted, caged, freed.

Superwolf used his powers to help his wolf brother and all the other animals who became his pack.

The hunters locked his wolf brother in a cage because they thought he was dangerous. Superwolf tried to hide his powers, except when others were in danger.

When Superwolf was published, Daniel went out for some drinks with a few course mates. Several drinks down, Abi, a slim, friendly girl with a blond bob and a sweet smile, asked him why he always looked so sad. 

‘You’re the first one to get published, your art’s caught everyone’s attention,’ she smiled shyly, ‘it’s pretty amazing. I just wondered. You don’t have to say. I just always wondered.’

‘I don’t know how not to be,’ Daniel answered, after a long pause.

Abi looked at him slowly, ‘Let me try something.’

It was easier than with Chris. Daniel couldn’t mistake her soft curves and small, pert breasts for Sean’s lean frame. He couldn’t pretend the warm wetness between her legs was Sean’s cock. He didn’t need to bite down on his lip so hard that it bled like he did when Chris came inside him, to stop him crying out Sean’s name. 

He came and thought only that it felt good, then circled and stroked her clit with his fingers until she quivered and he felt her inner muscles clench and release.

‘You’re good at that,’ she whispered afterwards as they lay together and passed a joint.

He could live with this.

There were many girls after Abi. The reputation that came with them brought Daniel a few friends as drinking buddies. They never seemed to have much to say to each other without a beer.

He could live with this.

The day before his graduation, the network approached him. They wanted to produce Superwolf as a series for their streaming service.

‘It’s so dark,’ the woman he knew now to be Sophie had commented. ‘That bit about the wall? It’s almost too close to home. But it’s still like a kids’ story. There’s this innocence to it.’

Stunned, Daniel agreed.

‘There’s definitely an audience for it,’ she said. ‘Life’s getting darker all the time. Come talk to us.’

He had scheduled an appointment and there could be no turning back. It seemed that Sophie usually got whatever she wanted.

Until Sean’s release anyway.

*

Daniel picks up his rucksack, weighing it in his hands. Would he be able to swim with it? Or even without it - the current was strong and relentless. 

The shadow of a thought rises up from the dark recesses of his mind, until a sudden noise cuts through it, sharp and cold and terrible.

Daniel forgets to breathe. He closes his eyes, hands stretched out, concentrating hard on the rock beneath his feet. He feels it tremble, far beneath the surface of the water, the unseen iceberg. He pulls with everything he has to give...

Finally, the rock lifts. He clenches one shaking fist. His legs wobble as the rock plummets toward the shore, but Daniel doesn’t stop. The second it hits the bank, he breaks into a run.

Sean yells.

Then, a terrible roar.

With every step, Daniel imagines Sean’s body lying motionless on the ground, the regret and disappointment frozen in his eyes, just like their father. He sees red smeared on his clothes, wide gashes in his arm, a bite gouged out of his neck that leaves his gasping as an artery bubbles a sad fountain of blood. He hears every word he will never, ever get to tell Sean, steal out hopelessly between his breaths because it is too late, he is too late.

When he arrives back at the camp, heart beating furiously against his rib cage, Sean is sitting quietly beside a brightly flickering fire.

There is no blood. There is only Sean, a bottle of bear pepper spray and the pans Daniel cooked breakfast in, bent a little out of shape.

‘Sean!’ Daniel sobs, his knees finally giving way. ‘Sean!’ His brother catches him before he touches the floor.

Daniel murmurs his name, again and again, into Sean’s shirt, into his skin, like a prayer, like it is the only word that has any meaning left.

’I’ve got you, _enano_ ,’ Sean says and holds him tight.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea came to me when I was writing a perfectly innocent fic and I just had to run with it, so sorry if the setting is a little repetitive.


End file.
